Mr. Peter Nyberg:

If one starts with what the people at that time appeared to have believed or appeared to have assessed, they certainly appeared to have assessed that the risk of one bank failing would have put at risk confidence in other banks. The confidence in banks would have declined remarkably, meaning that the other banks would have had funding problems either immediately or very soon afterwards. While there was no worry at that time that liquidity was really critical in every bank, the risk was there would be contagion if one bank was let go. I think that is what happened.

Speaking personally I find this quite credible. It was very much the same thing that Finnish decision makers agonised over at certain points in the Finnish banking crisis history and which also implied that the Government took on quite a bit of risk.